Month: April 2016

As May’s issue is being prepared and about to go to press, I’m posting a supplement with some news from the world of entertainment.

Within the last 48 hours we’ve lost two superstars to the “Great Beyond”-both too young to die-but alas-tis so.

“Chyna” was a belly dancer for a while in the early 1990’s before becoming “WWE” wrestling’s “Ninth Wonder of the World.” Multi-Lingual and brainy she was even a former “Peace Corps” member. However, “brains” could not stamp out her demons-a tough childhood and some tough times with the wrestling world.

Mayte Garcia was just a young teen when her mother sent pop superstar “Prince” a video of her dancing. He hired her for his “Diamonds and Pearls” tour. By the time she was 22 they had married but later drifted apart romantically after the death of two children.

Today we learn that Joanie Laurer, also known as “Chyna” has died at the age of 45 and “Prince” has left us at age 57 after a bout with the flu. Two pop icons of a generation, never to be forgotten, and two former members of the “family” of “belly dancing.”

Taheya Carioca – Pisces (February 22nd)

Dina – Aries (March 27th)

Esin Engin – Taurus (May 17th)

Fifi Abdo – Taurus (April 26th)

Samia Gamal – Gemini (May 27th)

Abdel Halim Hafez – Cancer (June 21st)

Sibel Can – Leo (August 1st)

Ozel Turkbas – Virgo (September 1st)

Omar Korshid – Libra (October 9th)

Naima Akef – Libra (October 7th)

Hind Rostum – Scorpio (Nov 12)

Hossam Ramzy – Sagittarius (December 15th)

Johanna – Sagittarius (December 16th)

“Egyptian Chick Magazine” is proud to announce it’s endorsement of Bernie Sanders for President of the United States as he is the candidate to deliver a true “difference” in America and indeed it’s dealings with the entire world. Our magazine promotes the concept of peace and of feeling free to speak your mind against the “status quo.” Bernie Sanders embodies all the qualities needed in a true leader.

“Female Genital Mutilation” – End the Torture Now!

By Hattie Jones

From her report of February 23, 2016, CNN’s Nima Elbagir reveals that despite the ban in Kenya and Great Britain, “FGM” has been moved to “secret rooms.” The sickening practice is even forced on young women who might be natives of Great Britain who are just visiting Kenya and for all intents and purposes are “kidnapped” and tied down for this ancient and barbaric practice.

I remember being shocked that in American popular culture of the 1970s, there was a reference to “FGM” – a young woman was going to experience sexual joy with Richard Roundtree’s iconic character before returning to the “Motherland” and the impending destruction of her “pleasure centers” and marriage. “Shaft in Africa’s” blasé treatment of this female character’s fate was troubling to say the least.

Today, the general public is more aware of “FGM” and the facts are nothing to scoff at. While preserving history and customs is sometimes a noble undertaking, nothing barbaric and cruel against man or animal should ever survive “antiquity.” Humanity is meant to advance, not remain in the dark ages.

The “Salad Days” of Susanne and Lou Forestieri: Two Artists Triumph – An Intimate Portrait by An Old Friend.

By Aziza Al-Tawil

Something I designed for Susanne using one of her early publicity shots.

In the 2014 short documentary film “For the Love of Art,” Susanne Forestieri, standing before a canvas, said “It’s always good to step back – which is a good lesson in life-if you get too close to things…you don’t really see them.”

With a touch of wistfulness, the artist remembers winning the “National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting” in 1996 for portraits of her daughter Gina and friends playing “dress-up” – the photos of their escapades years previous being saved in a shoebox. For Susanne, they represented “childhood,” “the loss of childhood,” and even just the very passage of time and the eventual loss of our fruitful childhood “fantasy lives.”

It is with my own touch of “wistfulness” in the year 2016, that I “step back” from Susanne Forestieri and see the woman as she really is – and as she “was” when I was just one of the little children in her sphere – indeed acting out those “fantasy lives” she so touchingly recalls.

To fully understand just what Susanne Forestieri’s impact on my life has been you have to go back in time – to the late 1960’s to be exact – when my mother found herself pregnant by a “bigamist” musician she thought she was legally married to. When he “split” as it were, my mother was at a complete loss of what to do. One of her former dance protégés Francine had a brilliant idea – years ahead of it’s time – when she told my mother Johanna “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. The same thing is happening to her.”

So, my mother Johanna met Susanne and her mother Doris through Francine. Susanne had just been left “with child” by a Greek musician she worked worked with and both Susanne and Johanna needed to stick together to get through this tough time – tough because soon to be forty year old Johanna’s flame Samir had stolen all her money and Susanne, quite a few years her junior at twenty three years of age, was a budding artist with no benefactors yet except her mother Doris.

Johanna had been bouncing around a few friends places-one arrangement was just not working out-she was sharing an apartment with Susanne’s male friend, a “shell shocked” Armenian man in Brooklyn Heights. His “phobia?” He was freaked out to see any doors closed or locked. He also had strange fits where he would slap my mother. At one point my mother was in the Ansonia hotel after one of these horrific encounters with Arthur in Brooklyn and became so ill she was throwing up constantly. Susanne and Arthur came and got her and took her back to his large “Pre-War” but after many apologies his bizarre behavior and fits of violence continued.

Susanne Forestieri and her son, my childhood “best friend,” Peter.

This is when Susanne’s mother Doris really “stepped up to the plate.” Susanne and Johanna moved into an apartment together to await the birth of their children, all expenses paid by Doris. Susanne’s father had unfortunately been very ill and had to live in a hospital. Susanne and Johanna made an easy friendship as both were from “multi-cultural” backgrounds. While Susanne’s father was Jewish, Doris was mostly of English and Native American stock. Ironically, now, after all these years I can see Susanne and Johanna’s resemblance to each other through their Native American connection mostly. (At some point, I can’t remember when exactly, Mr. Sherman passed away).

Susanne’s son Peter was born around November and I was born the following March. Like a true “unwed mothers co-op” Johanna and Susanne took turns babysitting Peter and I as each woman returned to her respective careers as belly dancers in New York City’s famed “Greek Town” District of Eighth Avenue and 29th St.

Francine Goldberg, the lovely “Aiyupa,” first dancer to dance with a sword in a nightclub on the East Coast to the Midwest. She saved her mentor Johanna’s life by getting her together with Susanne Sherman and her mother Doris.

As everyone has probably heard, “Wednesday’s Child is full of Woe” so I went through quite a while of being quite a “crier.” Peter on the other hand was a happy baby-all he needed to soothe him was a musical mobile that hung over his crib. The same mobile bought for me proved fruitless-it started going around and I took that as my “cue” to “start” crying not “stop.” (Peter did cry “with” me a few years later in Central Park one time when fireworks overhead seemed more like “battlefield” explosions).

Me and Peter: “The Early Days”

Peter was a sharp and observant little fellow. He was fascinated with me and relished doing things to “grab” my attention-like pulling the head off a favorite doll. As for me, I was alternately repelled and fascinated by Peter who oft, during Archie Bunker impersonations, would call me “Dingbat Dodo Bird.” I was also forced to endure “Star Track!” (“Star Trek”) theme play time, but I was a “sport.” I would tell you he was like “family” – but he really wasn’t. We were small children but it was more of a boyfriend/girlfriend dynamic. I can honestly say as the years went on Peter would never seem like a “brother.”

In the year of “Watergate” my mother was requested to return to her hometown of Charleston, WV to teach belly dancing at the YWCA-so she packed up and sported me off at age 5 to see my grandmother and, at least for a while, a new life. During that year I helped my mother teach what would end up being around five hundred students who filed into the gym and the other rehearsal rooms to learn what was the hottest sensation in the world at the time. Belly dancing was unleashing a wave of feminine expression as it exploded from a art form seen performed in cabarets in the 1950’s and 1960’s to a true housewives hobby. Well, not just “housewives,” but truly women from every walk of life.

Me, by now age 6 and teaching. Student named Libby in the background.

By the following year my mother realized that she really wanted to return to NYC as I was six years old and would be starting school. She wanted me to have the best education in the arts, so packing up again, we headed for NYC, the only place I’ve ever really thought of as “home.”

As soon as we hit town, my Mom checked us into the “Henry Hudson Hotel” and by the next night, no later, she looked up Susan-maybe called Doris first and got her new number. By a strange coincidence, Susan was living just down the street from the Henry Hudson Hotel in number “309” on 57th St. and the exact same building my mother had once lived with her first husband and dance partner, Bill. By now Susan was engaged to a piano player name Lou Forestieri and he was living with she and Peter in an apartment there.

Johanna hung up the phone excitedly and we raced down to their “pad” to see them. As I entered the apartment with my mother I was thrilled to hear Peter’s voice call out to me from the “loft.” There was a ladder and he cried out for me “Zizi” to come up there with him. As far as I remember, he had to come “down” as I was not particularly “athletic.” I belly danced but I did not climb ladders or trees!

Susanne’s Lou was a struggling musician, but who was in the middle of an exciting run as one of the piano players that came up out of the stage floor to play Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” during the “spectacular” that accompanied the screening of “The Sting” at Radio City Music Hall. “The Sting,” about “depression era” con men starred Robert Redford and Paul Newman and was the box office smash of 1973-74. It would go on to win seven academy awards.

Susanne, was still dreaming of and trying to pursue a career as an artist – something she truly had talent at but was in gestation at the time. My mother and I returned to what was left of the belly dance scene although it would not be long until it would dry up and wither away. My dream was to be an actress.

My mother enrolled me in school for what she hoped would be a fulfilling experience. However, it would not be long before it turned into a “hornet’s nest” as NYC was on the verge of one of the most devastating periods in history: It’s “bankruptcy” both “financially” and “morally.” The school I started to attend had become terribly tough for an elementary school. Little children were getting in with knives while the “establishment” was ill equipped to deal with it. During school months, the physical abuse that was to become just about the norm had begun, and some of the most trying years of my life were about to begin.

But my personal life was still rich in content. The friendship of Susanne, Peter, Doris, and now Lou, was a loving and supportive environment to foster all my dreams. My mother Johanna was a rather sophisticated woman and Susanne’s wacky personal style tickled her a bit. I will never forget the day Susanne came up out of a subway staircase on our block, Peter in tow, wearing a toboggan, a long black fur coat, and sneakers. Johanna had never seen quite an “ensemble” like it before and was amused.

Eccentric as artists should be, our friends were beautiful in spirit-the kind of New York people who touch each other’s souls – in the coffee shops, the “Cinema Revival” houses, the parks and museums. I eventually came to believe Woody Allen wrote “us” – he knew our kind so well – but really the City itself was the “writer” that marked us with it’s magic.

Pretty soon Susanne found herself with Lou’s child and they moved to 110th St. to a fabulous “Pre-War” apartment. Play dates often included another little boy named Ian who was about 2 years younger than Peter and I. Peter and I went to Central Park, spent the night in Astoria at Ian’s place and I spent a lot of time up on 110th St. I remember so well going to the Columbia University campus at night. It was terribly romantic, I thought, to see all the young lovers out walking. The new baby, Gina, joined the Forestieri clan, and Lou and Susanne married. The new baby was a beautiful Italian looking baby, and looked so much like her father.

At around eight or nine years old I took a few oil painting lessons with Susanne in exchange for posing for her in a frilly Victorian looking girl’s outfit. I demurely held a large sun hat in front of me as I sat for her – learning the smell of the turpentine and how patient an artist’s model must be. As for my art, Susanne was taken with me, calling me “the little colorist.”

The painting I created at around age 8 or nine while taking private lessons from Susanne.

In the late 70’s, Lou was doing some arranging for musical acts for clients like Eileen Fulton who played “Lisa” on “As the World Turns” and the very lovable Ted Ross who won a Tony as the “Cowardly Lion” in the “The Wiz.” (Ted would go on to reprise his “Wiz” role in the movie version which co-starred Nipsey Russell, my then neighbor at the “Henry Hudson Hotel” and make a memorable mark as the chauffeur “Bitterman” in the hit movie “Arthur” ). Eileen Fulton, whose autograph I scored at the time, also commissioned Susanne to paint her portrait. It remains one of Susanne’s loveliest works and certainly hints at her burgeoning greatness at the time.

Idyllic Summers were spent at Jones Beach on Long Island, the Astoria Pool, and even the “Dee Lee’s Bungalow Colony” near Tamarack Lodge in the Catskills – Ellenville, NY. Peter’s cousin Denise who was a few years our senior joined us in upstate NYC. My Mom was so busy working by now – trying to raise me without child support that she was unable to come on the trip and instead put me on a bus with Lou to go up and join them. That Summer we swam, ate Italian ices from Mr. Dee Lee’s vending cart, explored abandoned houses, played with toads and frogs and even discovered a “nudist colony” beyond some bushes.

“Dee Lee’s Bungalow Colony” was still there when a friend and I made a pilgrimage to my old “stomping grounds.” “Dee Lee’s” was now owned by Orthodox Jews.

I remember Susanne trying to keep up with all the grubby little kids baths and sometimes telling us to wipe off our dirty feet before crawling into bed. There was the time us kids dared bring a “tree frog” into the bungalow, and how scared we were when it “escaped” it’s enclosure. We looked every where and could not find it. That night, we wondered just whose bed it might crawl into and tried to act “nonchalant.”

A bungalow at “Dee Lee’s” in 2007, very much like the one we stayed in back in 1978. The Orthodox Jewish women allowed me to take pictures but, due to religious constraints, they themselves were “camera shy.”

The song that played every night at the Disco at Tamarack was “Last Dance.” “Last Dance” may have been the “Anthem” for the older more decadent crowd at “Studio 54” but for me it was the “anthem” for the soon to be ending of a nearly decade long or more friendship with the Forestieris and my dear Peter.

The candy store/pool hall where Peter’s cousin Denise and I played pool and drank a sugary softy drink called “Cherokee Red.”As it looked in 2007, down the road from “Tamarack.” I got there just in time. The long defunct “Tamarack Lodge” burnt down just a few years later.

It seemed like terrible, dumb things just started happening, and they seemed to just grab weight and start “snowballing.” While in the Catskills I had accidentally opened a door when a bunch of us kids were screaming and playing, and even though someone tried to warn me, I couldn’t stop my hand that was already in motion. On the other side was the toddler Gina and the door hit her lip. I felt so terrible as Lou cradled his crying baby. I said I was sorry but I knew what I had done was terrible and I felt awful.

Another mistake was a classic “faux pas” of saying the “wrong thing.” My mother had said to me that when Susanne had first started belly dancing in Greek Town she was nervous and had bit her lip on stage that night. It was just something she blurted out to me one day and like an idiot, at an inexplicable time, I repeated it to Susanne as if to say “My mother said you weren’t a good dancer one time.” I guess I meant to say “She said you were like a lot of people, nervous when they first start out.” The words became twisted and tangled coming out of my mouth and later I felt I had hurt Susanne’s feelings. But even more “Cats Ass Trophies” were soon to follow. Ian’s mother Linda had recommended a dentist to my Mom that turned out to be a sadistic crackpot who broke some of her healthy teeth while in the chair for another. My mom was horrified and angry at this dentist and angry at Ian’s mother Linda for sending her there. Their relationship soured overnight.

Pastel I did as a teen, still influenced by Susanne, I found I loved this medium because you could smudge it with your fingers.

Peter and I were close , but we never went to school or church together as I still lived down at Hell’s Kitchen and he lived on the Upper West Side. I remembered supporting him by attending his concerts when he was in the choir at “Saint John the Divine” cathedral but I never saw the inside of the private school he attended. Spending nights on 110th St. was still wonderful to me, the building had touches of marble, and the rooms were large and white and perfect. The night sky and the stars looked pretty from his room. “Goodnight Moon” first published a generation before us, was still the children’s book of the day. The first hint we would be incompatible as adults was that I was the “Gypsy” that was used to staying up late and Peter seemed to be more interested in the morning and “Military” time. Yet even as he shushed me one night as I chattered away in the dark – “Go to sleep Zizi” – I still felt love in my heart for my friend.

As for me, since returning to NYC at age 6 my mother had seen nothing but major disappointment where my schooling was concerned. I was a small child and had my school supplies stolen and was constantly picked on by bullies. Coming home covered in bruises, my mother took me out of public school but the abuse continued in private school. At one point, I was even sent to a public school across town to the “East Side” and really, it was no better.

After “Flower Power,” the new method for dealing with bullies in schools was essentially very “Kumbaya.” Embarrassment over some bad “reform schools” had brought about a change in how dangerous kids were dealt with. A teacher told me we were going to rehabilitate the kids that were stealing the school supplies from my desk. We acted out a scenario where I was to catch them in the act (The teacher played the role of the “bad guy” and when I implored her not to steal my pencils she acted out putting them back and saying “I’m sorry”). I tried this out during the “real thing” and the only thing that happened was they added a “black eye” to the pencil stealing!

Not too long after the trip to the Catskills I entered the private school “Lincoln Square Academy” in the Fall. There, in our class, was a young man a few years older than we were, and much bigger, who had been held back a few grades. This big boy began molesting the younger girls and practically tried to rape me. My mother had enough. She took me out of school and exercised her right to a private tutor for me. My mother acted just in time, not long afterwards we learned the boy had broken the teacher’s arm! (The only great thing about this school was seeing Jimmy Osmond in the lunchroom. He was a few years my senior and his family sent him there for a time).

When I was nine years old I had been tested by NYU psychologists who had deemed me a “creative genius.” My gift from two of the lesbian professors in the research study had been a huge ninth birthday party and tickets to see Baryshnikov dance at City Center. “Hunter College” had a “prep Grade school” that was booked to capacity with students for seven years or that would have been the school I was attending.

So, here was Johanna, still trying to do the best for me when another bombshell in our relationships was dropped. Susanne’s step father Morty worked for the school board. He had opined that perhaps I had made up some of the stories about school. Susanne passed this “tidbit” on to Johanna and she was livid. By now, my mother was terribly world weary. She could not take the slightest amount of aggravation. She said to Susanne on the phone, “You take care of your house – and I’ll take care of mine.”

As the phone hung up, a new chapter in our lives would begin, one without the Forestieris. Not long before this incident, my mother had a conversation with Lou about his grief for his sibling that was dying of cancer. It was a breakthrough for them. My mother said she never thought Lou really liked her too much, maybe just thought of women as being rivals to each other in some form, but he was “mistaken” Johanna would say. She said she never pitted herself against Susanne in any realm and I knew that to be the case. So Johanna was touched that after several years they finally had a conversation that smacked of human connection.

After beginning advanced lessons with a private tutor which lasted about a year, the School Board and Social Services came down hard on my mother, this time it warranted swift action on her part. My mother packed my things and sent me to Charleston, WV to stay with her mother and start Junior High School there which I did. I made some friendships there that have lasted.

Meanwhile, my mother learned that Susanne and Lou’s marriage was headed for “the rocks” and so was Ian’s mother Linda’s relationship with her man. More lessons in “Nothing lasts forever” I thought when she told me.

I returned to my mother and New York City the next Spring. As we plotted our next move I became an artist’s model for some of the members of the Art Students League. Our belly dance student Jan was a member there and asked me to pose for her group. My love of the Art Students League came from Susanne who had taken me into their supply shop on many occasions including one trip for charcoal pencils and erasers. Susanne showed me how wonderful it was to smudge charcoal pencil work with your fingers.

Sadly, the city’s decline in the 1980s, the beginning of the “Reagan Era,” and “trickle down” precipitated more hardships for Johanna. Working three jobs to support us and my still being too young to really go to work to help her, my mother fell ill with “narcolepsy.” She went to bed and could barely get out, just enough to go to the bathroom, and then, straight back to bed. I tried to take care of her but was at a loss of what to do. After not speaking to the Forestieris for almost two years or so at this point I did not confide our troubles with them and they may have already split up and left town by then, not sure.

Anyway, I dealt with this situation mostly on my own, then after talks with a social worker and doctor’s visit got Johanna together enough to see some improvement. But, by now, my mother just gave up on the city she had loved since moving there in the 1950s. The authorities were hounding her again and I could not argue with her that we had no support for anything lasting, there just wasn’t time, I was in the awkward age, and would just have to “come of age” and thrive somewhere else. We packed our things and headed for Charleston, WV.

Me, High School – Special program at Benjamin Franklin Vocational School, Charleston, WV- “Commercial Art Class,” photo by Charles Parks.

After attending school a couple of years in Charleston, and experiencing the death of my grandmother who by now was living in a “Senior Citizens” apartment complex, the “Gypsy Spirit” returned to me and my mother. By the mid 80’s we headed to Boston and a belly dance gig. The scene was not what it used to be but it was great to return to the stage.

As for visual art, I had taken the influence of New York City and it’s museums I used to hang out in, and the impact of studying with and just having Susanne Forestieri in my life, and had continued to create pieces in different mediums all through High School. I continued in Boston and also pursued writing.

“Hijab Woman” – a mosaic/collage I created in High School Art Class.

When the internet exploded as a means to really look up people and see what they’ve been up to, one of the first people I wanted to know about was Susanne and of course, I wanted to know how my childhood friends Peter and Gina were. I still felt guilty about opening the door on Gina when she was little and about the dumb remark I made to Susan stemming from the “biting her lip” anecdote, that I was, even after all these years, “beside myself.” In my heart I had already forgiven any trespass or “misunderstanding” from their side. Now, it was just me and my own guilt which I carried “like a cross.”

Through my initial digging I learned that Susanne had given up on New York not long after we did to seek other “Vistas” in Las Vegas, NV. I thought I remembered her sister Tina having connections to Las Vegas. I was also happy to see that Vegas had been a good move for her. She had thrived as an artist in her new atmosphere, been commissioned by casinos to paint murals, and won the “National Endowment for the Arts” prize in painting. Even though, yes, she and Lou had divorced, they both had thrived as artists. As for Lou, he had chosen Los Angeles for his new life and had gone on to work on “The Fabulous Baker Boys” film and then the musical scoring of TV shows and movies like “Diagnosis Murder” and “Beverly Hills 90210,” and even appeared onscreen in Bette Midler’s “For the Boys” and “My Blue Heaven” to name a few. I was also floored to find out more about Lou’s background in jazz – being trained by Bobby Hackett, working with Errol Garner, Count Basie, Lena Horne. He had even accomplished this before I knew him and I had just never realized!

As for their daughter Gina – I braced myself – and saw that this adorable child had seemingly grown up without permanent damage from the stupid thing I did when we were kids! She has become a successful hairdresser and a “reality star” to boot on a show about her trade “Split Ends.”

As for Peter, it was not evident to me what had happened to him just yet as he did not really have any internet presence to speak of. I hoped he was in the “land of the living” and was alright.

Shortly, after finding out what had happened to the Forestieri clan I told my mother. Not too long after she fell ill suddenly. During her severe illness, at one point she said to me, “Have you heard from Susanne or any of them?” I said, “No, I haven’t contacted them yet.” Then a short few weeks later my mother Johanna was dead.

There is a part of me that regrets taking so long to say something to the Forestieris. How do you thank people that gave you “the world?” That’s the question. In truth, there are no “words.” The truth is, these artists helped raise me in my formative years. Their impact on me could never be negated. There is another simpler truth that needs stating once more: Susanne’s mother Doris Sherman literally saved my mother’s life. My mother was always grateful to her and in awe of the kind of woman she was. As I write this I hope and pray that Doris is still living and feeling well so she can read this.

Finally, after years, Peter finally got a Facebook page. I see him and his wife and great kids doing all kinds of “outdoorsy” stuff in photos of them out in the desert, etc. I was touched and happy to see he had a normal and fun life. I still can’t ride a bike and have no desire to. I am glad he found someone to share his interests!

Susanne and Lou were amazing talents. Please check out their websites and see all they have accomplished in their great lives.

And one more thing. Don’t wait too long to tell people how much you love them.

(Our magazine is funded by “affiliate” marketing links and advertising. Thank you for supporting our site through shopping if you choose to do so. Saint Jude’s is a charity we promote and we receive nothing from them in return – just the gratifying knowledge that we have helped children).

Acknowledgments coming soon for the “Belly Dance Photo Restoration Project in cluding Shots from the Famous Tayoun’s Mahrajan”- the fundraiser is still ongoing.